


A Taste of Things to Come

by cazflibs



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: And speaking of cake HAPPY BIRTHDAY LVM, Angst and fluff all in one cake, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 18:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12637068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazflibs/pseuds/cazflibs
Summary: Lister's birthday had not gone well. From an emergency evacuation of Red Dwarf to being captured by GELFs, his 'special day' had totally and utterly sucked.But thanks to the person he'd never expected to give a smeg, maybe...just maybe...not all had been lost.





	A Taste of Things to Come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LordValeryMimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordValeryMimes/gifts).



> Written as a fic-gift for my lovely space wife, LordValeryMimes. Although you're best known for your hard-core smut, deep down you have a soft spot for 'first times'. You utter sap, you. But I did manage to squeeze in a good ol' double entendre which I'm sure is to your taste.
> 
> I wrote this before 'M-Corp' aired, so I'm guessing this particular Birthday isn't a 'big one' for Lister.

Lister was not in a good mood.

Watching the Xpress lift readout slowly tick over the hundreds of floors until it would finally reach him, he hissed a jet of air through his teeth in irritation. It was almost 8pm on his smegging _birthday_ and how had he celebrated it so far? 

The Last Human’s ‘special day’ had begun with a rude, early morning awakening in the form of the high-pitched wail of an ‘Oxy-Generation Unit Malfunction’ alert. Funnily enough, it was probably the one alarm that he'd ever deigned to wake up for. 

He’d quickly scrambled to the safety of Starbug, dragging a yowling Cat and a panicking Kryten in tow, so that they could ride out the defect until Red Dwarf’s self-repair systems could rectify the problem. 

Not that his hologrammatic bunkmate had been in any rush to join them. Indeed, Rimmer had finally rocked up over twenty minutes later, complaining loudly that this particular fault didn't affect _all_ crewmembers, and that their forced evacuation had interrupted vital tasks on board ship that he point-blank refused to elaborate on.

Lister had been left fuming, but said nothing. Even after all these years, he still couldn't fully figure Rimmer out. It seemed that every time he got teasingly close to thinking that _maybe_ the hologram felt the same way as he did, he would go and spout out a thoughtless comment like that. The man was like a smegging riddle that had no definitive answer, leaving the pair of them dancing around one another for months now. It was utterly and addictively infuriating.

To take their collective minds off things, Kryten had suggested that they take a tour around the sector whilst they waited for the repairs to complete, and see if they could find a nice spot to visit for Mr Lister’s birthday. Bad move.

Rather than paying attention to the navigational readouts, Rimmer had been distracted by some undisclosed, urgent business in the midsection. Pity really, as otherwise they'd have realised that they'd unknowingly strayed into GELF space.

Within ten minutes, they'd been intercepted and boarded by a furious band of GELFs that had taken them captive, transported them back to their settlement on the nearby swamp moon, and prepared them for sacrifice to appease their gods. Rimmer, understandably, was not particularly popular that afternoon. Well. Even less so than usual.

Lister had been quite convinced that this particular birthday would be his last. That is, until an all-too-familiar mechanoid had smarmed his way through the braying crowds, greeted the tribal leader like a long-lost friend, and smugly told the crew that he and ‘Khatareema’ had once bonded over their shared love of potted succulents.

After the group had been released and returned to Starbug, Kryten had seethed with such intense jealousy over Butler’s saving of the day that his head had blown a fuse, scattering forth a shower of mangled rubber and fizzing circuitry across the cockpit. Lister had then spent two tedious hours during their long return to the newly-oxygenated Red Dwarf working with the increasingly-grumbling hologram to clear out the mechanoid’s cache files so that he could reinstall his new head.

And as he'd finally traipsed wearily down Starbug’s ramp, Rimmer had shoved past him to hurry down to the deck before scrabbling for the one available Xpress Lift.

“Rimmer?!” Lister could hear the anger in his voice reverberating around the Landing Bay as the man jabbed urgently at the button for the doors to close. At the Scouser’s challenging brandish of arms, Rimmer’s gaze darted away to avoid all eye contact as the lift happily set off without them. 

It had been at least a forty minute wait until the next one.

So, suffice to say, Lister was not in a good mood. He heaved a bodily sigh that had been over 14 hours in the making as the lift finally announced its arrival with an unnecessarily chirpy _ping!_ If today was a taste of things to come for the next 364 days of the smegging year, then he might as well just stay in his bunk until his next birthday.

 

By the time he reached the door of the Sleeping Quarters, it clearly wasn't just Lister that was well and truly ready to abandon all plans of marking his special day. 

Thanks to an unidentified series of glitches that were sending Kryten’s speech unit into a flurry of garbled French poetry, he'd been forced to dismiss the mechanoid to allow him to self-repair. The Cat, bedraggled and frizzy-haired after their time on the swamp moon, was desperate to take a shower and enjoy a well-earned nap which he fully understood.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help but swallow back a lump in his throat as he paused alone, hand hovering over the unlock pad. 

_It’s just a day, for smeg’s sake,_ he berated himself. In fact, thanks to their being stranded three million years into the future and the freak numbers of time dilations they’d encountered in deep space, it could actually be Easter for all they knew.

With a sigh of relent, Lister palmed open the door with the full intention of getting as drunk as possible before falling asleep to some crappy horror movie…

...and instead was greeted by an explosion of chaos that radiated across the Sleeping Quarters from its hologrammatic epicentre in the tiny kitchenette. 

He blinked, dumbfounded. “Rimmer?!”

Startled, the man whipped back to face him with a look of utter panic, the piping bag clutched in his hands suddenly spurting forth a shocked jet of white chocolate icing across the deck.

“Lister!” he blurted before glancing down at the mess he'd made. “Smeg, sorry - I'm not usually like this.” Hazel eyes widened in embarrassment at the inadvertent double entendre. “With _icing_ , I mean. Not what I'm like in bed.” Wincing in mortification, he whirled back to the worktop. “Shut _up_ , you idiot,” he muttered angrily to himself under his breath.

Thanks to the unexpected adventures of that day, everything that could have possibly gone wrong with Lister’s birthday preparations had banded together against him to rejoice in one collective smeg up. The card was already ruined, the dinner preparations were woefully behind, and he’d not even finished icing the cake yet.

Rimmer dropped the half-spent icing bag onto the worktop with a sigh. Perhaps he should just give up the pursuit. After all, it was clear that his failures were doomed to be a taste of things to come. If he couldn't even prepare a questionably platonic birthday celebration for the man, how disastrous would a potential relationship be?

Picking his way carefully over the litter of balloons both half-inflated and burst, Lister slowly approached the table. The plates and cutlery had been quickly tossed in a pile, yet to be laid out and set. Nestled beside it stood a heavily-smudged watercolour card that seemed to have once depicted some sort of starscape. 

“I was going to finish it on Starbug,” came the quiet explanation. Lister glanced up to meet Rimmer’s mournful expression as he leant back against the worktop, clinging onto it with long fingers. “But those smegging GELFs barged in and knocked the pot of water over it when they went to grab me. Three smegging days that had taken me to paint!”

Clocking the Lamb Vindaloo that was currently spattering in the microwave, dreadlocks danced across Lister’s jacket as he shook his head in disbelief. “You did all this for me?” he asked, suddenly somewhat breathless. Perhaps the O/G Unit was still on the blink. “Why?”

Rimmer looked utterly perplexed. “Because it's your birthday?” he fired back tetchily, as if he were loathed to explain himself. 

Something bitter clung to the air against the comforting spiced smell of curry, and Lister sniffed in evaluation. “Is somethin’ burning?”

Rimmer gasped in realisation as he quickly palmed on some oven gloves before drawing out a tray of now-blackened naan breads from the grill. “Fan-smegging-tastic!” he growled loudly, dropping the tray onto the worktop with a clatter. “Does anything _else_ want to go tits up whilst I'm at it?

Lister started at the tinny buzz that sounded from the monitors behind him. His nose wrinkled as he glanced at it curiously.

“If that's another red alert, I swear to god I'm firing myself out of the nearest airlock.”

“Don’t get your lightbee in a twist, man. It’s just one of your diary alerts,” Lister soothed. As he tapped at the screen to open it, warmth lit up weary features as he turned to face the hologram once more. _“Listy’s birthday,”_ he echoed quietly.

“Well, this is one to chalk up, isn't it?” Rimmer tossed aside the oven gloves with an irritable sigh before running his hands through crazed curls. 

Lister couldn't find the words to form an answer; instead, he remained silent as dark eyes danced across the hologram’s face in assessment. Rimmer looked as tired as he felt. But even after their epically shitty day, he'd obviously gone to huge efforts to try and salvage _something_ from the tattered remains of his birthday. 

There was something about the imperfection of it all. From the hurried scattering of cutlery and the charred smell of the naan breads, to the half-naked cake that flirted with the abandoned piping bag which now slowly oozed icing onto the kitchen worktop. 

It all made sense now. It was all so damn perfect...because it _wasn't_. 

Rimmer let out a low growl of frustration, hands slumping back down by his sides. “All I wanted was to make sure this day was special for you, with no distractions or smeg ups,” he fumed as the man approached. “And typically, for us, it's all just gone to -- ”

The hologram’s ranting was cut short by a gloved grasp that reeled him into a passionate press of lips against his. Inhaling sharply in surprise through flared nostrils, wide eyes soon melted closed under the warmth of Lister’s kiss; happily succumbing to the man’s caress of his lips that slowly teased his mouth wider.

An overwhelmed whimper escaped without permission as Rimmer felt a tongue slowly slick against his; and all at once, the infinite stretches of the multiverse shrank to encompass just the pair of them. 

During their thirty years bumbling through deep space together, they'd experienced countless undocumented phenomena that could warp their perception of reality. But nothing seemed to suspend all sense of time and space like the sensation of the Scouser’s lips on his.

The audible pluck as they finally parted seemed to send the clock ticking once again, though Rimmer still reeled from its effects. “ -- smeg,” he breathed, as if he'd never been interrupted.

With their faces still mere inches apart, Lister’s gaze roamed happily up and down the man’s features. “Huh,” he eventually chuckled, rolling the taste of Rimmer’s tongue thoughtfully around his mouth. “I didn't have you down as the type who licks out the bowl.”

Clocking the hologram’s guilty blush, Lister smiled happily to himself. If _that_ was a taste of things to come, then this would be a fan-smegging-tastic year indeed.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Matter of Taste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522919) by [cazflibs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazflibs/pseuds/cazflibs)




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